The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2002, Volume 13

by Stephen Jones

  The father started to protest. ‘But you’re almost done. You just need to draw in the mouth.’

  Cath stopped and Joe swore. He just wanted to get her out of there. She walked back to the man who exchanged glances with his wife. Cath touched a finger to her lips. ‘Mouths are the hardest part. The most important part,’ she said. ‘Everyone – they say “the eyes are the windows of the soul.” They say “Oh, you got the eyes just right.” They don’t know. They don’t know it’s the mouth you gotta get just right. That’s what makes a picture come alive. Like it’s gonna just start . . . breathing.’

  The father cleared his throat, but the mother tugged at his shirt. Joe grabbed Cath’s arm and pulled her away. The man muttered something, but Joe didn’t care.

  He led Cath to a gravel path that switched back and forth up the steep hill to the highway above. Halfway up, an observation area looked down on the pier and the beach and the boardwalk. Cath twisted away from him there. A low stone wall ran around the area’s edge and two lampposts stood at either end. Putting her stool down under the nearest light, she began setting out her sketches against the wall.

  Joe dropped the other stool and sat down. The fatigue that lived with him always now rose to engulf him. He felt dead inside, all used up, like the way Cath’s pictures made him feel, waiting to be sucked into the void. ‘We had a deal,’ he said.

  Cath sat, looking up and down the path. ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘No kids, remember?’ Joe said. ‘And nobody with a family depending on them.’ He tried to make his voice sound strong, but his hands were shaking.

  She opened her pad. ‘Kind of cuts down the field, Joe.’

  ‘Use one of the sketches you’ve got put away.’

  Cath laughed. A bitter, empty sound. Joe imagined the mouths she drew making that kind of sound. Cath looked at him finally. ‘All gone. Used ’em all.’

  Joe felt the emptiness again, a void gaping below, drawing him down. He leaned forward, head between his hands, fingers pressing hard on his temples, trying to make his fear go away. ‘Jeez, Cath. All of them?’ He searched her face for some hope.

  Cath shrugged. ‘Girl’s gotta eat.’ She stared past him and he heard gravel crunching underfoot. Joe turned, his hand slipping by reflex to touch the switchblade inside his boot top.

  A fat man in black pants, white shirt, and paisley tie loosened at the neck was struggling down the steep path from the highway, a beach chair in each arm. He walked over to the stone wall and put down the chairs to rest. Nodding at Joe and Cath, he glanced at her sketches. He began to turn away but then looked back. His gaze ran over the portraits lined against the low wall like prisoners before a firing squad. The man whistled.

  Joe sighed, from regret and relief. Cath would eat tonight.

  With her mouth, she breathes you in . . .

  The man’s name was Harry. He haggled with Cath over the price, then he sat down, and Cath started sketching. Joe glanced at the two chairs that Harry had carried but he couldn’t see a wedding ring so he kept silent.

  Cath worked quickly, her hand slashing at the page, pausing only to switch the color of her pencil. When only the mouth remained unfinished, she put the pad down on her lap.

  Harry looked down at the sketch. ‘There’s no mouth.’

  ‘Mouths are special, Har,’ Cath said. She puckered at him and Harry laughed, a nervous squeaky sound. Cath touched a finger of her drawing hand to Harry’s lips. He gave that little laugh again but didn’t pull away. Cath ran her fingertips slowly over his lips, tracing each curve and contour. Sitting on the stone wall, Joe thought of her fingers on his own skin at night in bed, tracing the lines of his body. Love and fear and lust – with Cath, they all mixed together, colors in a picture flowing into each other, until you couldn’t separate one from another.

  She lowered her hand to the paper, her eyes still on Harry’s mouth. Picking up a red pencil and dropping her gaze, her hand began to stab at the paper in short urgent strokes. The mouth grew under her fingers as Joe watched. She finished in seconds. Removing the sketch sheet, Cath handed it to Harry. He regarded it for a moment, grunted his approval and paid her. Portrait under his arm, he picked up his chairs and nodded a goodbye.

  After watching Harry labor down the path toward the boardwalk below, Joe walked to where Cath sat cross-legged on the ground, her sketch pad on her lap. She carefully lifted a sheet of carbon paper from the top of the pad. A copy of the sketch of Harry she had just rendered stared up at Joe in black and white. No color, thought Joe. As if all the life’s been sucked out of it. No, he thought. Not all of it. Not yet.

  From her canvas bag, Cath removed a small rosewood box, its hinged cover carved with letters in a script that Joe thought was Arabic. He’d never checked, wanting to know as little as possible about the thing. Cath opened the lid and withdrew what looked like a child’s crayon but without any paper covering.

  The crayon was as long as Joe’s middle finger but thicker, and a red so dark it was almost black. Joe remembered drawing as a kid, the crayons, the names of the colors. Midnight blue, leaf green, sunshine yellow. He knew the name that this one would have carried – blood red. It glinted in the overhead light as if it would be sticky to the touch, but Joe had never touched it so he didn’t know for sure. He didn’t want to know.

  Hunched over the portrait copy, Cath began to retrace the lines of the mouth with the red crayon, adding color and shading. She worked with almost painful slowness. Joe remembered how once, when she had made a mistake at this stage, the fury had burst from her like a wild thing caged too long.

  At last, Cath straightened. She gave the mouth one last appraising look, then returned the crayon to the rosewood box. Joe walked back to the low stone wall. He knew he would turn back to watch her. He always did.

  Below, Harry had reached the boardwalk. The big man put down one chair to wave to someone on the beach. Joe’s stomach tightened. A woman waved back at Harry, and a small boy and girl ran to hug him. Jesus, no, thought Joe.

  He turned back. Cath sat hunched over the portrait of Harry on her lap. Joe rushed to her, praying that it wasn’t too late, a prayer that died when he saw the picture. It had started.

  The portrait’s mouth was moving, fat lips squirming like slick red worms on the paper. A pale vapor rose thin and wispy from those lips. Cath bent her head over the mouth and sucked in that misty thing that Joe never wanted to name.

  A scream rose from the beach. A woman’s cry, a thing of pain and fear. Between her sobs, Joe could hear children crying.

  He walked back to the low stone wall and looked down at the crowd gathered where Harry had fallen. Joe stood there, stare locked on Harry’s still form, feeling the void opening below him again. ‘Cath, we have to get out of here.’

  Cath didn’t answer him. Joe tore his gaze from the scene below and turned back to her. She was standing now, looking south, down the coastline. ‘It wants to move on,’ she said.

  Hope and dreams and soul devoured . . .

  Joe drove, staring at the white lane markers slicing the dark two-lane one after another, like brush strokes by God on a long black canvas. White on black, he thought. The negative image of Cath’s secret portraits. Black on white, white on black. Just the red missing. Just that blood red.

  How long before some cop put it together? A string of deaths, all the victims drawn by a young woman with a male companion. Christ, Harry had died with a sketch in his hand.

  Cath stirred beside him and then he felt her stare on him. He could always feel her gaze, like a physical touch, like a brush dipping into him, drawing something from him. Is that how you do it, Cath? How you take the thing you take? Capture it in your eyes, then cage it through your fingers onto the page? Have you been feeding on me too?

  ‘I’m still hungry,’ Cath said. Her voice was small, almost childlike in the dark.

  He knew what she meant. ‘We’ll hit town soon,’ he said. But it would be three in the morning when they arrived. No one
around. No one to draw. And she had no pictures left. Cath said nothing but looked away. After a while, he figured she was asleep. Then he felt her stare again.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt people, Joe.’

  He swallowed. This was new. She never talked about it, even when Joe did. He should say something now, something smart, something that would lead them out of this. He should but he had nothing left to say. He could only nod. ‘I know, babe.’

  ‘It just gets so hungry. I get so hungry.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I can’t stop it. It keeps pulling me, making me . . .’

  Joe could feel her pain in those words. And his fear.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘So tired I wish I could just go to sleep and never wake up. Ever been that tired, Joe?’

  Joe swallowed again. All the time, he thought, but he just nodded. Cath looked away and he took a breath as if he was coming up for air.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ she said again.

  ‘I know.’

  Her stare settled on him again like a beast on his chest.

  ‘I could draw you, Joe.’

  Joe’s hands tightened on the wheel. Cath had said it the way a kid told you she could ride a bike or tie her shoe. The lines flashed by in the headlights. White on black, no red.

  ‘Don’t even need to see you,’ she said. ‘Know you so well.’

  Joe stared at the road. Don’t look, he thought.

  ‘Know your face like I know my own,’ she said.

  The burden of her gaze lifted. He looked at her.

  Her eyes were shut and her hand moved in her lap, mimicking drawing motions. ‘Don’t even need light. Could draw you with my eyes closed.’ Her hand stopped and she leaned her head back. A few minutes later, Joe could hear her breathing slow and deepen.

  So there it is, he thought. He always knew it would come to this. This was why he had stayed, even after he learned what Cath did, what she was. Afraid that when he left, when Cath no longer needed him, she would draw him down. Draw him down onto the page from memory, then drink him in like all the others.

  The road lines flew at him like white knives out of the night. White knives and blackness. Just the blood red missing. Taking a hand from the wheel, he felt inside the top of his boot, running his fingers over the bone handle of his switchblade.

  A few miles down the road, he found a wide shoulder and pulled over, turning off the engine and the lights.

  Cath still slept. Hands shaking, Joe pulled the knife from his boot. It’s self-defense, he thought. But he just sat holding the knife. It was for the best. How many more would she kill? But he still loved her. Could he do it? He was tired, so tired. He leaned back. He only slept now when Cath did, when he didn’t feel her stare. He closed his eyes. Her breathing brushed his ears, soft and deep, soft and deep, soft . . .

  Joe awoke to the sound of scratching on paper. He looked over. Framed against the moonlight, Cath sat hunched over her sketch pad, her hand moving in short, sure strokes.

  ‘Kind of late for drawing, isn’t it, Cath?’ Joe asked. His throat was dry. He fumbled in his lap for the knife.

  ‘Hungry,’ she said, her voice barely audible.

  ‘Dark, too,’ he said, blood pounding in his ears.

  ‘Don’t need light. Drawin’ from memory,’ she whispered.

  Drawing from memory. Drawing him. He knew she was drawing him. ‘Don’t, Cath.’ His thumb found the blade’s button.

  ‘Tired of being hungry.’ She sat back, her gaze on the sketch.

  Joe couldn’t see the picture, but he saw the red crayon in her hand. She’d finished the mouth. ‘Please, don’t do it,’ Joe said. His cheeks felt cool and wet. Joe realized he was crying.

  Cath lifted the paper to her face. She was crying too.

  ‘Don’t!’ Joe screamed. The knife blade clicked open.

  ‘Bye, Joe. Sorry.’ Cath breathed in through her lips.

  Joe saw a pale wisp rise from the paper and move toward her mouth. Saw his hand gripping the knife flash forward. Saw the blade slice her white T-shirt and slide between her ribs.

  Saw the red, the blood red, flow over the white of her shirt to blend with the black of the night and the shadows.

  Cath spasmed and fell sideways onto him. Surprise mixed with peace in her face. ‘Thanks . . . Joe,’ she whispered. Her eyes closed and her head slumped back. A wisp of mist escaped her lips. That’s me, Joe thought. Sobbing, he pressed his lips to hers, sucking in the breath and the grey mist from her mouth.

  Bitter and sour, the thing burned his throat as he breathed it in. Something was wrong. Joe felt a presence of something dark, something . . . hungry.

  His head spinning, Joe flicked on the dome light. Blood soaked into his shirt where Cath slumped against him, the picture still clenched in her hand. Joe stared at the sketch, a scream forming in his mind.

  A familiar face stared back at him from the page, a face that Cath knew from memory. The face she knew best of all.

  Not Joe’s face.

  It was Cath.

  She hadn’t been drawing him. She’d been feeding herself to the thing that had lived in her. Cath had been killing herself.

  The emptiness that was the mouth in Cath’s pictures gaped beneath him and Joe felt himself being drawn down.

  Lost to you, what might have been . . .

  A February evening, St. Pete’s Beach. Joe sat on his stool, his back to the beauty of a Gulf sunset. His portraits lay strewn on the sand around him like the dead on a battlefield. A woman and man looked them over while Joe waited. The woman held the hands of a little girl and a boy. Twins, Joe guessed. Kids couldn’t be much more than seven, he thought. He remembered when that would have meant something to him, before Cath died, before . . .

  The little girl tugged on the mother’s hand. ‘They all look so sad, Mommy.’ The mother hushed the child while the father haggled with Joe over the price. The day had been slow, so Joe agreed to do both kids for the price of one.

  Joe started sketching. His hand leapt over the paper, and the images of the children grew around the emptiness where their mouths should have been. A tear ran down his cheek, but he kept drawing.

  He had to. He was hungry.

  POPPY Z. BRITE

  O Death, Where Is Thy Spatula?

  POPPY Z. BRITE HAS PUBLISHED FOUR NOVELS: Lost Souls, Drawing Blood, Exquisite Corpse and The Lazarus Heart. She has had two short-story collections published, Wormwood (aka Swamp Foetus) and Are You Loathsome Tonight? and a collection of non-fiction, Guilty But Insane. She also edited two volumes of the erotic vampire anthology Love in Vein.

  Wrong Things was a recent collection with Caitlín R. Kiernan, and she has two novels forthcoming, The Value of X and Liquor. Brite lives in New Orleans with her husband Christopher, a chef.

  ‘ “O Death, Where Is Thy Spatula?” is the second in my series of stories about my alternate life as Dr Brite, the coroner of New Orleans,’ explains the author. ‘This was my earliest career ambition, but unlike Dr Brite, I doubt I could have made it through the organic chemistry courses in medical school.

  ‘The exquisite cuisine of Devlin Lemon was inspired by many New Orleans restaurants, including Marisol, Lilette, Gerard’s Downtown, Dante’s Kitchen, and Commander’s Palace under the late chef Jamie Shannon, for whom the story was written.’

  THE MAIN THING YOU NEED to know about me is that I love eating more than anything else in the world. More than sex, more than tropical vacations, more than reading, more than any drug I’ve ever tried. I’m not fat – I’m actually quite slender – but I can’t take credit for any kind of willpower or exercise regimen. The truth is, I’m not fat because I only finish eating things that are really, really good, and there just aren’t that many of them in my opinion. I love eating, as I say, but I’m picky as hell. A French pastry, ethereal manifestation of butter, custard, and chocolate, designed like a little piece of modern architecture? I’m there. A slice of cold pizza? I might nibble at it until my hu
nger headache goes away, but no more.

  So, for the tale I’m about to relate, this food-love is the central fact of my being. I have a job (coroner of New Orleans), five purebred Oriental Shorthair cats, a mixed-breed husband (Irish and Jewish; wire-haired; his name is Reginald, but I never thought that suited him, so I call him Seymour), a house, and a hell of a lot of books, but none of that is terribly important here. What’s important is that you understand how much I love to eat.

  All right – the fact that I am the coroner of New Orleans is somewhat important too, but I don’t want to put you off right away. Just store that information for future reference.

  People think New Orleans is a world-class food city. Possibly it is, but only in a very narrow sense. There’s a saying that we have a lot of great food but only about five recipes. Gumbo – etouffee – jambalaya – oysters Rockefeller – and I don’t even know what the fifth one is supposed to be. Maybe breaded, deep-fried seafood, because we certainly have plenty of that. I see arteries full of it on my tables every day.

  Perhaps I’m being unfair. There are, in fact, a lot of good restaurants here. But most of them . . . well, did you ever see that episode of Frasier where Frasier asks Niles, ‘What’s the one thing better than a flawless meal?’ and Niles answers, ‘A great meal with one tiny flaw we can pick at all night’? Most of the places here are like that, except the flaws aren’t tiny. I can easily think of twenty places with excellent appetizers, terrific entrees, and dessert lists dull enough to plunge me into despair (apple tart, bread pudding, the eternal Death By Chocolate). There’s a good French restaurant on Magazine Street where, even though I always pay with my credit card, the waiters refuse to acknowledge my existence – ‘May I clear that for you, sir?’ they say, gazing lovingly at Seymour as they whisk away my salad plate. There’s a simple neighborhood place where they used to have perfect fried chicken livers, but they hired a new fry cook, and now (no matter how I beg) the lovely little livers resemble nothing so much as deep-fried pencil erasers. I don’t even want to talk about who and what you have to know to get a decent meal at the old-line venues like Antoine’s.